


Spy Games

by manic_intent



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Burn Notice AU, Espionage AU, M/M, Minor Character Death (offscreen), Secret Santa, Slash, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:31:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Marourin as part of the Secret Mutant exchange, in a pinch hit.  Prompt: Burn Notice AU, with Erik Lehnsherr as the spy and Charles as the trigger-happy ex boyfriend.  Erik is burned for unknown reasons in Mexico and wakes up in New York City.  Somehow, he needs to raise $500,000, in order to find out -why-.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spy Games

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've never watched Burn Notice, but after some research (i.e. wiki) the premise of the show seemed quite interesting. :) Naturally there will have to be some tweaking to try and get everyone's characters focused properly. For a change, everyone will have very limited powers in this AU. Also, there will be a few minor character deaths (nothing to warrant the AO3 warning), but nothing in detail.

I.

Waking up in a soft, warm bed that smelled of lavender was disorienting, given that the last memory that Erik had involved filthy, dank Mexican jails and the lovely sort of hospitality that involved bludgeons and electric shocks in novel places. He'd been rescued, then. About time.

Turning his head weakly to the side, Erik blearily noted the time on the white face of an old steel alarm clock. Six-twenty-five, probably in the morning, given the gray light dredging in from the lemon yellow curtains beside the floor to ceiling bookshelves packed full of esoteric books... and... wait. Erik recognised this room. He knew, without looking further, that next to the book shelf would be a three-legged table that creaked if you opened its single drawer no matter how much oil was smeared on the grooves, and above that would be a framed 'humorous' painting of three dogs playing poker-

Erik wasn't quite sure how long he spent frozen in panic, but eventually the door to the bedroom opened, and the owner of the apartment shuffled in, in pre-caffeine pale, his hair sticking out in odd angles, yawning, wearing a nightshirt one size too big for him that draped almost to his knees and hid the Smith & Wesson Model 52 that was almost certainly hidden somewhere on the slim body; as Charles closed in, Erik could feel the shape of the metal, the loaded bullets, coiled and waiting. The curtains were dragged open, and it seemed that the sun had started to rise.

"Did they hand me to you to finish the job?" Erik asked, bracing himself.

Charles Francis Xavier, NYPD, Homicide Squad, Brooklyn North precinct, eyeballed him coolly, then he yawned again and made a futile, absent-minded attempt to smooth down his hair. "Twenty three hours ago, an unmarked gray car dumped you at the doorstep to my precinct. Nothing in your pockets save for a white card in your shirt, which had my name on it. You have no idea how much bowing and scraping I had to do to get you out of there. Care to explain?"

Erik frowned, confused. "The last thing I remember, I wasn't even in the United States."

"Doing your 'job', I suppose."

For all that he had been exposed to the extensive insanity of life in the NYPD for years, Charles still stubbornly retained a cultured British accent. It played havoc with Erik's libido. Logically, he knew that at least a few million people in the world spoke the Queen's English like a BBC reporter, and he'd even possibly killed a few of them over the years. Unfortunately, the bits of him due south never seemed to take that in stride where Charles was concerned.

"Sort of." When Charles merely sniffed instead of launching into a harangue, Erik added, a little hopefully, "So you're not going to kill me?"

"I'm a police officer, Mister Lehnsherr." Charles ignored Erik's wince at the frosty honorific. "I don't kill people. Do you need anything before I go?"

"Um. Coffee." Erik watched, surprised, as Charles nodded and stalked out of the room. There was a pause, then a gargle from the coffee machine, and Charles eventually returned, with a small, steaming cup of black heaven. "You're a treasure, _liebling_."

Charles pointedly ignored him, placing the cup carefully down on the side table, as Erik sat up. To his surprise, his body didn't immediately fold up, and the democratic response from all his muscles just involved strenuous aches. He'd done some healing then, while he was out. Under the sunlight, he studied his arms. The bruising had even faded to a greenish, muddy color.

"Anything else?" Charles asked, after a long moment of silence, with a tone that had snow on it.

"You're really Charles, aren't you?" Erik had a long streak of curiosity that had served him well in espionage but had occasionally frustrated even the most patient of his handlers.

"And you're usually at your most asinine in the mornings."

Erik bit back on a grimace. Charles had a temper that he usually buried deep, deeply enough that most of the rest of the world tended to think of him as some sort of bumbling, vaguely Professorial paragon of patience and sweet nature. But when it simmered to the surface, it was best to start hiding all the sharp objects.

"Only, the last time we parted, you made some rather graphic assertions about my entrails, should you ever see me again, and-" There had been a blur of movement, and then the slightly warm muzzle of the Model 52 was wedged under his chin.

Charles smiled like an angel: perfect and humorless. "I was brought up to be polite to the infirm, Mister Lehnsherr. But I'm beginning to re-evaluate my upbringing. Understand?"

"Yes," Erik breathed, fascinated, as the gun disappeared, and Charles yawned again, smoothing down his nightshirt. "Absolutely."

"Good. Can you walk, if you have to?"

Erik tried moving his legs. "I think so."

"There's food in the fridge. I'm going to work. I trust that you will use your best endeavors not to set any of my personal property on fire, this time."

"I will," Erik refrained from pointing out that the _last_ time that minor arson had happened, it was only because he'd forgotten to watch the stove, what with being thoroughly occupied over the back of Charles' couch. "Thank you for taking me in, Charles."

"Try not to make me regret it," Charles shot back tartly, and slipped out of the bedroom.

Erik counted under his breath, to five, and then let out a sigh, reaching for the coffee. Sometimes, the water under the bridge could, on closer inspection, be napalm, and in this case, he mostly had himself to blame, starting from when he'd allowed his libido to persuade his brain that gorgeous blue eyes, a lovely smile, and that British accent made up for the fact that Charles was a policeman, and a very good one. His uncanny sense of intuitive perceptiveness and job-grown cynicism had eventually grown less and less patient with Erik's evasions.

Things had gone downhill, punctuated and worsened by the periods that he'd had to be absent on missions, and the rather impressively explosive end to it all had been shaped by the fact that they'd _both_ lost their tempers. Erik still regretted that, sometimes, at least whenever he wasn't looking down the short muzzle of a Model 52, and when he was in a particularly maudlin mood, wondered if Charles did, too.

Erik spent some time staring longingly at the closed door, proving that a part of him was still ~~pathetic~~ human, then he sighed and finished the coffee and forced himself up onto wobbly feet and managed to use the bathroom without any more incident than accidentally barking his elbow against the door frame.

He felt worlds better after a shower, and headed over to the kitchenette to scrounge the ice-encrusted depths of Charles' ancient fridge for something edible, only to hesitate. Charles used his fridge as a sort of message board, usually to himself; there was the usual scrawled shopping list, a long list of numbers, a few haphazard crime scene photographs, possibly to ambush the weak-stomached unwary masses, and, tucked between a tourist's map dotted with red circles and a photograph of an alleyway marked with chalk, was a small pink square.

"I called in but you were out. Tomorrow at seven would be great," Erik read out aloud. The square was signed 'Moira', and wasn't in Charles' handwriting, and when Erik leaned over to sniff at the paper, he could pick up the faint hint of perfume, something light, feminine and flowery.

Well. He had always known that Charles was bisexual, and it would be unrealistic to think that someone who looked like Charles did would stay single for long; besides, Erik himself hadn't been celibate since the break-up, in any regard. Breathing in, Erik drew lines of logic around his temper and found himself feeling disconsolate, anyway, and had worked his way into a sullen irritation by the time he made his way over to the four-seater round dining table propped up against the kitchenette wall.

As usual, it was a chaotic paper graveyard, full of more gruesome photographs, reams of notes in Charles' scrawl, and sheaves of reports, almost overflowing over the telephone that squatted to a side. Erik picked up the receiver and dialed Langley, recited his code to the operator in a daze, and tried not to stare at the pink note on the fridge.

He had to report in, just to keep Langley from declaring him dead, or something equally inconvenient, and then he would rest up and get back to Mexico as soon as possible. Finish up business, and then find a nice, warm bar somewhere far away from New York, and drink himself under the goddamned counter.

The preppy, female operator interrupted his darkening mood with an apologetic, "I'm sorry, sir, but that code is no longer operational."

"What?" Erik sat up sharply enough that most of his back muscles began to throb. "There's been a mistake. I'm not dead. Didn't Langley mount a rescue?"

"All that I'm authorized to tell you is that your code is no longer operational. Is there anything else that I can help you with?"

"My code is..." Erik hesitated, then he asked, in disbelief, "I've been burned?"

"I'm afraid that I can't answer that question, sir." The operator, however, sounded mildly sympathetic, which told Erik all that he needed to know. "Is there anything else-"

"Yes, damnit. I need to speak to Codename Riptide. My handler."

"I'm afraid that I'm not authorized to put you through, sir."

Erik swore at the phone in German, then felt slightly ashamed of himself, apologized curtly, and hung up. Taking a deep breath, he tried a few more of his contacts in the CIA, and even, after a moment's desperation, Agent Frost from MI6, but all of them either hung up instantly when he spoke, or stated a flat "Sorry, wrong number," before they did so. With a touch of schadenfreude and malice, in Frost's case.

He'd been _burned_.

But then why had he been rescued? If the CIA thought that he was now compromised, wouldn't it have been easier to let the Mexicans take care of their problem? Why leave him at Charles' doorstep? And lastly - this made Erik cold to think of it - how had they known about Charles? Erik had been _careful_. Information about their previous sexual relationship could ruin Charles.

Taking a deep, harsh breath, Erik counted his breathing until his temper and panic subsided, then he dialed one of the last numbers in his repertoire, a contact that he was fairly sure that none of the CIA would have gotten to, if only because the man despised most of them on general principle. The reason that he tolerated Erik was a mystery even to Erik himself.

"Azazel," the Broker answered the phone in his thickly accented voice. The Broker affected a Russian accent, and had a fondness for symbolism and theatrics, but other than that, the CIA's file on him was sparse. No one knew what the Broker looked like, what his real name was, or where he was based, but his information network could rival the CIA's and MI6's combined. More importantly, if the Broker really was Russian, he didn't let the Cold War get in the way of doing business, and he was cheerfully neutral and amoral. In better times, Erik even cautiously liked him.

"This is Erik Lehnsherr," Erik introduced himself. "I need a-"

"Ah, _moy drook_ ," Azazel drawled, cutting him off. "I hear that you have been... what is the English phrase? Put 'on ice'. I am disappointed, friend Lehnsherr. I had thought that you were incorruptible."

"They got to you as well?" That was a depressing thought. "And what do you mean, 'incorruptible'?"

"No one 'gets to me', friend Lehnsherr," Azazel corrected him reproachfully, and ignoring his second question. "But it is something I hear, in grapevine."

Azazel's Russian accent only thickened whenever he was trying to be evasive. "I want to talk business, Azazel."

"Of course you do, friend Lehnsherr. Our usual rate of payment, perhaps. A little difficult when your accounts are likely frozen, no?"

A chill settled in the base of his spine. "Nevermind that. I need to set up a meeting with my handler. In person."

"The inestimable Riptide," Azazel seemed to think this over, then he chuckled. "For you, I give discount. Five hundred thousand American dollars. The usual account."

" _What_? To set up a _meeting_?"

"No one else will talk to you now, will they?" Azazel pointed out smugly. "No one with my resources and... discretion, no? Maybe you think this over. But some free information, friend Lehnsherr. I think the people who saved you, may not be so friendly. They send insurance to make sure that you behave. If you stay in New York, I think they will not cause you too much trouble. If you do not, who knows? It should not be too difficult for you, no? New York is, big city."

"You know who saved me?"

"I know that they have powerful pawns. Powerful enough to extract you from your predicament in Mexico. Clean operation. Nice enough to leave you with your young man, no?"

"Charles isn't my young man," Erik stated. Not anymore, anyway.

"Oh?" Azazel's tone was mocking. "Maybe they make mistake. It is of no matter. You want to do business, friend Lehnsherr, you know my price. _Do svidaniya_."

Azazel hung up, and Erik replaced the receiver on the phone, folding his hands over his belly and slouching deeply into the chair, until he was resting his skull on the back of it. It occurred to him that he could have asked Azazel how much it would cost to know _why_ he had been burned, other than setting up a meeting with his ex-handler, but he had to know why from the source. Most of the time, handlers were the ones who issued burn notices, after all. He had to meet Riptide. And if the burn notice had been issued incorrectly, Erik fully intended to let his handler know, in person, how displeased he was about the inconvenience.

II.

Charles seemed mildly astonished when Erik opened the door, but he shouldered past, with an armful of Chinese takeout, the oily scents following him in a greasy wake to the cracked old glass coffee table in the living room. He dumped the food, dropped his bag, and staggered away without a word towards the flat's single bathroom, possibly to drown himself.

Having lived with Charles once, for a tempestuous two years, Erik recognised the warning signs, and busied himself arranging the takeout. There was more than enough for two, but Erik knew that this never did indicate anything. The fridge, after all, had up until Erik's efforts late this afternoon stored the carcasses of many a leftover takeaway box, and had been gearing up to become a minor biohazard. The only remotely edible items had been a set of fresh yogurt cartons, which was so unlike Charles that Erik had briefly wondered whether they belonged to 'Moira'. Eating all the yogurt had possibly been petty of him.

Eventually, Charles re-emerged, looking slightly less like a member of the living dead, and poured himself into a couch, balancing a manila folder awkwardly on his lap as he ate with the distraction of someone who wasn't even tasting the food. For a lack of anything to do, Erik ate, as well, picking away the bits he couldn't recognise or which were too charred, cleared the boxes when Charles was done, and made Charles a cup of tea.

Charles stared at the cup when Erik presented it, then he accepted it with suspicion. He did, however, relax after a few sips, enough to state, "I didn't think that you would still be here."

"There have been a few minor setbacks." Erik admitted.

Charles transferred his penetrating glance onto Erik, the way Erik had always hated. After a month of being madly in lust with a young detective whom he had met when he was being forcibly escorted off a crime scene that he had in no way been the cause of, but had been trying to cross via shortcut, Erik had abused his personal privileges as part of the CIA and had found out everything that there was to know about Charles Francis Xavier.

He knew about the family feud that had left Charles and an adopted sister practically penniless when Charles had still been studying in Oxford. He knew about the crime scene that Charles had stumbled upon in Whitechapel, where the police had been questioning witnesses, and Charles had stopped, looked at everyone carefully, and then had walked up to one of the witnesses and told the Inspector mildly that the witness was guilty, and then had spouted a long list of conjecture that had earned him the nickname 'Sherlock Holmes' and a lifelong vocation in law enforcement. He knew about the eventual transfer and recommendation to the NYPD, about Charles' team, about the way he liked his tea to be made (black, no milk), his favorite food (fruits) and his favorite colors.

Other people would have called this stalking. Erik preferred to think of it as research.

All of his research, however, couldn't have prepared him for the experience of actually having to live with Charles' uncanny intuition. It was a pain in the fucking arse.

Eventually, Charles said, so very mildly, "I don't have a lot of savings. There's no use in asking me for money."

Erik grit his teeth. "I wasn't going to ask you, Charles. And I suppose that you're going to tell me that you deduced that from the color of my fingernails?"

That was another problem that he had with Charles. Quite often, Charles brought out the best and the worst in him. "Obviously not," Charles' tone turned frosty. "You're still dressed in the same clothes that you arrived in, even though the shirt is obviously one size too small for you and was probably fitted onto you by whoever had 'delivered' you. You love your creature comforts and you can clearly walk; you could have left and purchased yourself something that fits - you know quite well that there are a few clothes shops just a block away that have decent stock. In fact, you haven't even left the flat at all - your shoes are exactly where I left them. Finally, you're trying to hide it, but you look shaken. Money has, remarkably, never been an issue to you before, and it must be a considerable sum if you haven't already tried broaching the topic, since you're shameless that way. Assets frozen, perhaps? What have you gotten into?"

Erik let out a long, slow breath. Charles was far too intelligent for the police, really. "Do you really want to know?"

Charles continued to stare at him, for a long moment, then he looked down at his tea. "No. I suppose not. You can have the petty cash, if you still remember where it's kept."

That was in the hideous, yellow bone china teapot, balanced on the cabinet beside the ancient radio, and if Erik recalled, it usually had a handful of crumpled bills, lots of coins, and the occasional weird little gewgaw that Charles' sister Raven liked to pick up from her travels. Raven was usually the cause of Charles' esoteric interior decoration. Erik had in fact already peeked into the teapot this morning, out of habit, and had found a crumpled Christmas card. Under the generic gold text and the manic pictures of smiling reindeer had been another neat message from Moira, 'thanking' Charles for 'everything'.

Erik had meant to let the matter slide, but the green-eyed monster had already reared its ugly head and spent the afternoon festering. "Who's Moira?"

Charles' expression froze for a heartbeat, then he said, curtly, "That's none of your business."

It really was none of his business, wasn't it? Disconsolate again, Erik settled more deeply into the couch. Charles' sharp response had been clear enough. "All right."

"Good." Charles turned a few pages in the manila folder in his lap.

After a long silence, Erik asked, "Big case?"

"Yes, Mister Lehnsherr," Charles drawled, as patronizingly as possible.

"About the Joker murders?" Erik had spent an instructive afternoon reading the notes that Charles had left on the kitchen table, mostly to keep his mind off his predicament and the less rational parts of him off returning to old obsessions.

"You should really stop reading my things," Charles sighed, as though he hadn't always been in the habit of scattering documents and photographs everywhere in the flat. Charles seemed to think of inspiration as something that could be corralled into behaving if his eyeballs were held hostage to work reminders as often as possible.

"Hard to avoid, really. I'm surprised that you haven't tried gluing your notes to the ceiling."

"I'll keep that suggestion in mind." Charles leafed through his notes again. "But yes. Five murders as of this morning, one every couple of weeks or so. All of the victims were either homeless persons, or prostitutes, or both. In all cases, killed with knife wounds. Joker cards were left on the bodies. The bodies would then be stripped and dressed in a superhero costume from 'Detective Comics'. We've had a Batgirl, Huntress, Batman, Superman, and Robin. Each time the body would then be dumped in front of a bookshop, seemingly at random. 'Superman's' body was dumped in front of a Catholic bookshop in Brooklyn. 'Batman's', in front of an erotic bookstore in Times Square, for example."

"Really." Erik tried hard not to rewind in his head the way Charles' red, red lips had shaped the word 'erotic', and mentally kicked himself. Charles had always liked to talk shop, if only because he somehow trusted Erik with the details of a case, and liked having a sounding board.

"Yes, Erik. No blood spatter on the crime scenes, either."

Possibly, Erik was also the only non-colleague Charles knew who wouldn't blanch at a description of how intestines had been arranged on a sidewalk, things like that. Sometimes Erik wondered how much Charles really knew about him, or whether Charles thought that Erik was a serial killer who hadn't yet slipped up. "I suppose you've already tried to trace the costumes."

"You'll be surprised how many fetishist shops in New York there are that sell the damned things. Or the number of people who buy them. Assuming that the costumes were purchased in New York to begin with. Still, I have men on the job."

"There were many volunteers, I presume."

Charles made a face. "Oh yes. We've had no leads, and no suspects. The newspapers are beginning to crucify us, and the Commissioner is... unhappy. And when he's unhappy, he tends to spread the unhappiness around."

Erik thought the matters over for a moment. "Why didn't the murderer force the victims to dress first, before killing them? Or did he?"

"No knife marks on the costumes. Our killer wanted the costumes pristine. Other than the blood seeping from the victims," Charles added, sourly.

"Of which there wasn't much, was there?" Erik concluded. "Stands to reason. Man kills his victims somewhere offsite. Bleeds them dry for a while so as not to ruin the costume too much, dresses them up."

"You have the mind of a criminal," Charles observed, with a snort, adding to Erik's serial killer theory. "Yes. Somewhere there should be a den of some sort, but it's difficult to triangulate. The homeless don't tend to trust the police, nor do prostitutes, and for good reason."

"Ah." Erik picked up the copy of the Times from the table, and turned to the continuation of the cover story featuring the murders. He found what he was looking for after a quick glance. Perhaps it was time to call in a small favor.

When he put down the paper, Charles was staring at him again, with narrowed eyes. "Interested in the reward money?"

"I've always been keen on helping the police with their enquiries," Erik replied, as innocently as he could, but it had occurred to him earlier today that Charles' attitude, his fridge, and his kitchen table had all been evidence that Charles was working on something high profile, and high profile cases tended to have enterprising citizens and/or trusts with rewards. It wasn't enough to cover what Azazel was asking for, but it would be a start.

"Yes, if I recall, getting you to _stop_ was the problem," Charles muttered. "Try not to get in our way. The notes are on the kitchen table, if you haven't already gone through them."

That sounded promising, although if Charles was going as far as to implicitly permit his involvement, quite possibly the NYPD was at its wit's end. "You're not going to kick me out?"

"You don't have anywhere else to go, do you?"

And that right there was one of the reasons why Erik's originally uncomplicated lust for Charles and his British accent had turned into something embarrassingly obsessive and pathetic. It was the reason why Erik had sometimes found himself tripping over stray animals in the flat or ancient retirees from the K-9 unit, or even the occasional useless and down-and-out member of Raven's weird group of friends. Charles cared about every hopeless cause and every sob story in the same way that Erik cared about completing his missions. As long as Erik needed help, Charles would let him stay. In Erik's line of work, the unrepentantly good hearted were rare and fascinating creatures.

"No."

"And I don't want to know what you were doing before you were dumped at my workplace, do I?"

"No." Erik forged with relief towards more familiar ground. He had to remember that Charles was a temporary ally, out of necessity. Azazel did not give warnings lightly. Eventually, Erik would have to distance himself, for Charles' sake if nothing else.

"Was it illegal?"

"Depends on the definition."

Charles sighed. To forestall the argument, Erik added, "Did anyone from the precinct recognise me?"

"No. I've been careful. I told them that you were a friend of my sister's."

Erik nodded. This would have been believable to anyone who knew the Xavier family in passing. Raven knew a whole host of mostly unsavory characters, despite her brother's best efforts. "I won't impose on you any longer than necessary, Charles. I really do appreciate this." When Charles didn't respond, Erik tried, "I'm sorry that we left matters on a-"

"Don't talk about the past, Mister Lehnsherr." Charles interrupted, a note of finality in his voice.

 _I've never felt like this for anyone else_. The stray thought bubbled into mind, then died in his throat as Charles' shoulders hunched. "No. I suppose there's no point. Have you ID'd 'Robin' yet?"

III.

Much to Erik's irritation, all of his safe deposit drops, including those that he had made under fictitious names, had all been cleaned out, and his apartments were empty and in some cases, locked or already occupied by the unsuspecting. A little minor pickpocketing once he had healed enough for his hands to be steady allowed him to replenish the petty cash pot and still have enough to get himself a new set of clothes.

Further thievery and some judicious shopping built him up a decent disguise kit, and some suitably shabby old hand-me-downs, and then a short phone call from a public payphone ended with him waiting in a nondescript alley close to a truck stop, hands stuffed into the pockets of his charcoal gray wool coat. He had slipped the 'insurance' that had been placed on him a few blocks back: possibly an FBI tail, by the look of it.

Eventually, a battered green sedan backed into the other end of the alley, then a short, broad-shouldered man got out, a ubiquitous, chewed cigar jammed in the edge of his mouth. Despite the cold, he was dressed only in a cracked old brown bomber jacket over a thin white wife-beater, and frayed jeans.

"Lehnsherr."

"Logan. Didn't think that you'd come yourself." Logan had a bit of silver in his hair now, but he still looked far younger than he should be, given that the first time Erik had ever laid eyes on the retired Canadian operative had been in Auschwitz, during the liberation, tagged on to the main body of Soviet troops. Maybe Canadians aged well. They'd had a few more run ins, especially after Erik had joined the CIA.

Logan grunted, and briefly took the cigar from his mouth, breathing out a thick fog of cigar smoke. "Could say I was curious. Heard you're bad news now, bub. But a favor's a favor and I owe you one. You want a Walther? Or a Glock? Glocks are popular now."

Erik was briefly filled with the impulse to buy something for Charles. Thankfully, common sense quickly prevailed. That, and the knowledge of how many questions Charles would ask if he produced any unlicensed small arms, howsoever nicely wrapped.

"You've got access to StarkTech, don't you?"

Logan continued smoking for a long moment. "Could be that I'd be interested in knowing where you heard that from, bub."

"It's my business to know things," Erik shrugged. "I need two guns. One that shoots tranquilizer darts, and one 9 mm pistol with a silencer."

"Lots of other gunmakers for those sorts of guns, bub," Logan noted, reflectively. "Easier to explain if you're caught, too."

"I haven't seen any other guns that work in all conditions, even underwater, Logan. Or which can double as an explosive, or which can shock people who don't have the right sort of fingerprints."

"So, you're saying, hypothetically," Logan drawled, "If a couple of them special prototypes that ain't listed go missing from the labs, we're even?"

"We'll be even," Erik agreed.

"Same deal, Lehnsherr. You get caught, them guns get found, we ain't ever met recently. Cross me and you'll regret it."

"Same deal, Logan."

Logan chewed his cigar absently for a moment, then he nodded slowly as he took it out of his mouth, exhaling. "I take my debts seriously, I do. Lucky for you. I'll give you word in a couple of days."

"Thanks, Logan."

"Keep your head down, kid," Logan told him, not unkindly, and got back into the car.

More 'insurance' was parked in a small, nondescript navy blue car within sight of Charles' apartment, and out of habit, Erik snuck in through the fire escape and climbed the stairs. The door to the flat was unlocked. Now cautious, Erik nudged the door open, drawing the knife that was strapped to him under the coat, and the blood froze cold in his veins for a moment as he saw the slim, brunette figure slumped with his back to the door at the kitchen table, dressed in one of Charles' old fashioned tweed jackets-

Closer inspection revealed the figure to be a mannequin with a wig, and a white card tucked into the collar printed with the word "Behave".

Erik saw red for a moment before discipline kicked in. Sheathing his knife, he started to check the mannequin for any other little messages, when the door to Charles' flat unlocked, and a petite auburn-haired woman stepped in, trim and pretty in office drone clothes, a white blouse and a gray pencil skirt, a manila folder hugged to her ample chest. She let out a gasp when she saw Erik straighten up from the mannequin, then she frowned.

"That's... that's a mannequin, isn't it? My God, I thought that it was Charles for a moment."

The woman had a key to Charles' flat. As calmly as he could, Erik asked, "You're Moira, aren't you?"

Moira smiled, with pretty self-confidence. "Oh yes. And you are...?"

"Max Eisenhardt," Erik stated curtly, presenting the name that he had first provided to Charles. His trained mind offered at least twelve ways of covertly getting rid of the pretty and self-assured Miss Moira, but he stifled the urge with regret.

"Ah." Moira looked surprised. "Charles told me about you."

"Nothing good, I suspect."

"I don't know, he did say that you were a 'handsome son of a bitch', which is a part compliment in my books."

Moira had an infectious grin and a playful wit; it was clear why Charles probably liked her. Erik held on grimly to his jealous dislike. "Not in his books."

"Well, don't mind me," Moira shot the mannequin a final, dubious glance, and sat down primly at the armchair in the living room.

"You're waiting for Charles?" At Moira's nod, Erik added, "He's probably working late. Again. I could tell him that you were here." He could feel the beautifully sharp edges of the knife nestled under his coat, but unfortunately, knife kills tended to be messy, and Charles would be extremely displeased, if he ever found out.

"I'm used to it," Moira noted wryly, "And usually I don't have company. Are you here on a visit?"

"Charles is putting up with me for a while, yes."

"How long will you be in New York?"

"I'm not sure. Few weeks, perhaps."

"That's good," Moira smiled. "We should all have dinner sometime, someplace nice."

"If work allows," Erik went for evasiveness, edging to the closest window to peer out at the street, and was just in time to see Charles strolling towards the blue car. "Oh no..."

Moira was at his shoulder so quickly that Erik flinched. "That's Charles, isn't it. What's he doing?"

Charles knocked politely on the window of the car, and waited politely until it scrolled down. Erik almost didn't dare to watch. "He's showing them his badge, isn't he." Charles gestured animatedly, and then he folded his arms, with the polite certitude that Erik had long privately termed the Xavier Iron Curtain; come hell or high water, Charles was not going to budge.

"Don't worry, Charles can take care of himself," Moira smiled wryly, "And when he gets into a mood like that, he won't take 'no' for an answer. There, you see. That car's moving off. Everything's sorted."

Charles trotted back towards the apartment block, even as Erik took a deep breath for calm and tried to refrain from offensive defenestration. Moira padded back to the chair, settling back into it, even as Charles eventually opened the door and dragged himself through, looking like death warmed over.

"Hello, Moira. Ah, and you're still here, Mister... Eisenhardt. And what the hell is that mannequin doing there? Is it wearing my _clothes_?"

"Long story," Erik quipped, even as Moira chirped, "Here's the file that you wanted. And you didn't tell me that you had a friend over, Charles. I would have passed the file to you in your office, instead."

Charles stared at Moira, then at Erik, then he frowned. "Don't the two of you know each other?"

Erik glanced at Moira, even as she shot him an equally puzzled glance. "I've never met her before in my life."

"Charles," Moira added, "I've only ever heard of Max when you talked to me about him."

"I've had a long day and another victim," Charles snarled, rubbing a palm over his face, "The two of you can stop fucking with me, all right? I've played along for long enough but now I'm tired! What's the CIA's interest in this case? Do you guys even have jurisdiction?" At Erik's openmouthed stare, Charles snapped, "Oh yes, I've long kn... suspected you of it, _Erik_ , and as to you, Miss MacTaggert, the signs are obvious when you-"

"You're _Erik Lehnsherr_!" Moira started up from her chair, going pale. "What are you doing here? You've been burned!"

Charles looked instantly confused. "What? You didn't know who he... what do you mean, burned?" even as Erik shifted his feet, combat-ready, with a low hiss of, "What does the CIA want with Charles?"

"What do _you_ want with Charles?" Moira shot back.

"All right, the both of you, _sit down_!" Charles snapped. "Yes, you, Erik. Sit!"

Erik grudgingly pulled out the chair at the overflowing kitchen table. "Charles, you-"

"Shut up! You first, Moira. What is this thing about burning?"

"It's a notice that the agencies send out to each other," Moira conceded grudgingly, "It means that the burned agent is seen as unreliable. Corrupt, usually, or a double agent whose cover got blown. It isn't issued lightly. All their assets are frozen, all their personal details wiped. They become ghosts. Usually, they're also... terminated."

Charles turned his stare onto Erik, and it took every inch of Erik's self-control not to flinch away. Eventually, Charles stated, "But you don't know the details, do you, Moira?"

"No," Moira admitted, grudgingly, "Whatever it is, it's above my authorization level."

"And Erik doesn't know what happened, either." Charles' gaze swung away, and Erik felt himself sag with relief. When Moira opened her mouth to protest, Charles added, with a touch of irritation, "He seems genuinely confused to be here, and I really doubt that a corrupt agent or a double agent would be left free to roam about, would they? And if he'd been burned for something less, you'd probably have heard about it, wouldn't you? I doubt you would have been told about every burned spy there was out there. That means that Erik has to be rather well known, yes? So it's rather odd that the details weren't publicised, yes?"

"Right, and right again," Moira seemed to undergo some internal struggle, then she smiled faintly. "You're wasted in the police, detective."

"And what are _you_ doing in the police, Agent MacTaggert?" Charles retorted.

"The case that you're on," Moira admitted, reluctantly. "The higher ups are concerned."

Erik frowned. "Why? It's a serial killer, killing the homeless. Tragic, yes, but hardly a matter for the CIA."

"Don't you see?" Moira pointed at the photographs on the table. "What do all the victims have in common?"

"They've all been dressed up as caped crusaders, and they've all been killed by knife wounds. _And_ they're people who wouldn't have been missed if they disappeared for a few days," Erik noted.

"Today's victim, Charles?" Moira glanced at Charles.

"Dressed as the Martian Manhunter," Charles frowned at her, "Green face paint, even. Stab wounds. Is there something that you've been keeping from me?"

"Six caped crusaders. Six knife wounds. What's another name for the spy game, Mister Lehnsherr?"

Put that way, it was obvious. "Cloak and dagger," Erik frowned. "You mean... but why in the world... there's something on the Joker cards, isn't there?"

"They're cryptograms if put under the correct sort of light," Moira nodded, if with clear reluctance. "We've got our best men working on them."

"You mean... you've been stealing evidence," Charles accused, incredulously. " _And_ withholding evidence!"

"But why go to so much trouble?" Erik asked, rather bewildered. "Killing people, dressing them up, encoding Joker cards... "

"Serial killers tend to be insane," Moira sighed. " _Usually_ , they confine their little games to the local law enforcement, or the FBI. This is new."

"This is a lot of conjecture," Charles cut in sharply. "It could just be a serial killer with a penchant for costumes and knifes."

"That's true," Erik agreed. "The CIA could be overreacting."

"All right, fine," Moira glanced around, then she lowered her voice. "This isn't going to get further than this, all right? I'm going way out on a limb trusting you as it is. I could get burned myself."

"You can trust me, Moira," Charles assured her warmly, and Erik's teeth ached for a moment when he clenched them tight.

"You've ID'd all the victims except the first one. That's because he's RED, Charles. Retired CIA. Patrick Ostler. He vanished from his nursing home about a week before the murder. Video surveillance caught nothing. He was last seen wheeling himself out of the recreation room on his way to the gardens."

"And I suppose that the location of the nursing home would be classified?" Charles was now staring hard at Moira.

"Precisely. And you can see that I don't know it, I presume." Moira observed calmly. "Just the way you could 'see' that I was a CIA agent. You're a dangerous man, Charles Xavier, and a very clever one. Coming up with all that conjecture all the time to hide the nature of your 'deductions' is a good touch."

Charles turned very pale. Erik couldn't feel any metal on Moira, but if she was any shade of agent at all, that didn't necessarily mean that she wasn't armed. "I ask you again, what does the CIA want with Charles?"

"There are a few people in the world with... a touch of power," Moira's tone turned a shade defensive. "People like Charles usually go into the fortune telling business, or becomes rather successful con-men, or start thinking that they're crazy and get locked up in institutions. As a whole, they're rather harmless; the range isn't very long, and all they can pick up are surface thoughts. That's why the government leaves them be. In fact, we've long suspected that MI6 has one in its ranks. But I'm not so sure that the world is ready for a psychic policeman."

Erik reached for the dagger in his coat even as Charles snapped his gaze over to him. "No violence. Moira-"

"You do a lot of good, Charles," Moira interrupted, wearily. "But you're on dangerous ground in this case. And you've taken up with a burned agent. That doesn't look good."

"I just want to stop whoever it is who's killing all those people in my city," Charles growled. "As to Mister Lehnsherr, he's just staying until he's back on his feet, and then he'll leave. That's the usual pattern."

Erik tried to pretend that it didn't hurt to hear that, but he managed a nod when Moira looked over to him for confirmation. "I need to contact my handler. Find out why I was burned."

As he thought, Moira instantly shook her head. "Even if I could get that sort of information, I wouldn't help you. As far as I'm concerned, you were burned for a reason, Lehnsherr. I've got my eye on you. So does the FBI, it seems. Charles, take care of yourself."

"You're going to steal that sixth card, aren't you?" Charles narrowed his eyes.

"Someone else is taking care of that," Moira admitted calmly. "I know you have questions, but you need to sleep before you collapse. And if it helps, I assure you that we're on the same side. I'm not so sure about Lehnsherr."

Erik waited until the door had closed, then he muttered, "Bitch."

"Now that's unfair," Charles told him reproachfully, though he continued his slow pilgrimage towards the bathroom.

"You shouldn't have spoken to those agents outside."

"I wasn't in a particularly goldfish sort of mood," Charles retorted, unrepentant. "I trust that you're now well enough to sleep on the couch. And get rid of that damned mannequin!"

The door to Charles' bedroom slammed shut, and Erik winced.

IV.

Logan waited patiently until Erik had finished inspecting the goods, then as Erik made the sleek silver guns disappear into the holsters under his coat, he drawled, "We done, Lehnsherr?"

"We're done," Erik nodded, grateful, At least _something_ was going right. "Logan, did you know a man called Patrick Ostler? Ex-CIA." Logan, in Erik's experience, had an uncanny knack of knowing _everybody_. Possibly only disinterest and, Erik suspected, an existing powerful financial backer, kept Logan from going back into the game with a business to rival Azazel's.

Logan eyed him thoughtfully, then the cigar was out of his mouth, sandwiched between thick fingers. "Could be. Why?"

"Could be that I need to know where he got put out to pasture."

"Yeah?"

"Ostler's dead, Logan. I'm trying to find out why."

"That so." Logan subjected him to another calculating once over, then he seemed to relax a fraction. "Can't say I'm sorry. He was a fuckin' weasel, that one. Always a mystery to me why he didn't go rogue. Still, he used to do good work when he wasn't running his mouth. You're looking at Glenacre, bub. That's where your government waits for people like you who develop special needs problems in their old age to die. Got friends there, I talk to them sometimes. Nice place. Upper West Side digs."

"It's always a pleasure to meet an information broker who doesn't ask for up front payment," Erik observed, with a grin.

"Don't tempt me, son." Logan nodded at him, and padded away to get back into his car.

Somewhat to Erik's uncomfortable surprise, Charles was waiting for him back at the flat. He had spent yesterday heading out to work early and coming back late and exhausted, after all, and here he was, sitting primly on the couch, in the middle of the afternoon, ostensibly reading case notes. Erik knew better, if only because his honed sense of survival was telling him to expect a bullet at any moment.

"Took half a day off?" Erik could do calm and polite.

"Yes." Charles didn't look up. "I thought perhaps that we could talk."

"Never ends well," Erik predicted, with a quick glance at the windows. The curtains had been drawn over them, and he circled around the room, groping with his sixth sense. Nothing metal seemed out of the ordinary. No bugs, then. Eventually, he leaned over the back of the armchair and propped his elbows over it, trying not to look as though he was prepared to take cover behind it at any moment. "What did you want to talk about?"

"You didn't seem very... surprised when Moira mentioned what I could do," Charles glanced up now, but his expression was unreadable. "Did you know that all along?"

"Wouldn't you have known if I did?"

"I can only read strong surface thoughts, Erik. It's not always reliable, at that."

Being called 'Erik' again was a start. "No, I didn't know."

"Then?"

Erik stared at Charles for a long time, then he sighed, and took his pen out from his shirt pocket. "You're not the only one who's special, Charles." Placing the pen down on his palm, he concentrated. Charles gasped as the pen lifted off, hovering an inch over his skin, and Erik palmed the pen back into his shirt pocket. "Was I surprised? Sure. But it was logical. I've read your file, Charles. You're unerringly correct in your deductions only when you're faced with a suspect. I passed that off as your skill at interrogation, previously."

"You've read my _file_?"

"Yes," Erik admitted. "After, well, after I first met you."

Charles wrinkled his nose, a sure sign of the onset of a tempest. "And you breach the privacy of other citizens for fun, do you?"

Only the privacy of those who were so unaccountably gorgeous that he couldn't quite think, offhand, of how to approach them, Erik thought, and then he regretted it when Charles abruptly stiffened, with a faint flush on his cheeks. "Ah... as to that... _you_ breach the privacy of others all the time, I should add."

" _I_ can't help it," Charles snapped, though his shoulders seemed to have lost some of their tension. "Do you know that sometimes when you look at people, you just think, offhand, about how you could kill them and dispose of their bodies?"

"I can't help _that_ ," Erik muttered, then a thought occurred to him. "Oh no... how much exactly do you know about me, Charles?" It was going to be God's own humor if he sorted out the undoubted misunderstanding with Riptide, only to get burned _anyway_ because of Charles.

Or was Charles the reason? Moira had known about what Charles could do, after all. But then again, if the CIA suspected Charles of stealing secrets, however inordinately, he very much doubted that Charles would have retained his freedom.

"Not much. You don't think of missions in any detail at all when you're here. So I don't know any federal secrets," Charles' tone turned acerbic. "Besides, you were hardly ever around for very long at all."

"I _tried_ ," Erik stated, keeping a tight hold on his temper. "Besides, _you_ also keep ungodly hours!" Oh well, so much for civility and patience.

"At least _I_ don't follow you around during my free time and take pot shots at your marks!" Charles snarled. "Have you any idea how _hard_ it was to explain all the conveniently dead bodies? Shot with high caliber guns? Especially once it kept happening?"

" _I_ don't walk headlong into obvious traps!"

"I always have backup!"

"I was worried!" Through his fury, a tiny part of Erik still drew up short as Charles rounded the armchair, growling. "Charles-"

"You can't just massacre anyone pointing a gun in my general direction! There are laws! Do you know how many cases you fucked up because there weren't any surviving suspects? I can take care of myself, you obsessive prick!"

"Oh yes? What about that time you got shot in the back and the bullet nearly missed your spine?"

"Occupational hazard-"

"Well, I wish that it wasn't!" Erik retorted hotly, the small voice of self preservation buried in the white heat of his anger. "I was beginning to hate it whenever I had to go on missions! I could never... Someday I thought that I would come back, and I would just be in time to miss your funeral! It would have been better if you had never stumbled on that murder in Whitechapel-"

Charles could throw a mean punch, but Erik had better reflexes, and they ended up, despite his efforts, wrestling on the ground like a couple of schoolboys. Charles got a sharp knee in his stomach, with knocked him off kilter for only a moment until he got his fists back into play, and Erik cracked his head against the tiled floor of the kitchenette with a yelp. About to forcibly shove Charles off him, he froze instead as Charles fisted his hands in Erik's coat and kissed him roughly, all clicking teeth and angry breaths, and then Erik carefully rolled them over, cushioning Charles' skull with his palm and taking over, until their lips were bruised and their breathing mingled and shallow.

"You could have arrested me," Erik murmured, when Charles started with that breathless whine that never failed to make his libido ignore all sense of logic. "If you knew that it was me."

"Shut up." Charles hissed, and he could feel the hot, hard line of Charles' cock, pressed against his belly. "There's some cooking oil in the cabinet to your right," he added, and Erik could feel rational thought ceding the field for now to the stupid sort of lust he felt whenever Charles so much as smiled at him. The Model 52 was carefully set aside, then Charles pulled back his coat and frowned critically at the guns holstered to his body even as Erik cursed, dragged the cabinet doors open, and pulled the bottle of olive oil out by concentrating all of his attention on the bottlecap.

"Are those licensed?" Charles demanded, gorgeous with his hair all out of place, his legs wrapped around Erik's waist.

"What do you think?" Erik asked dryly, even as he set the StarkTech guns carefully aside. Charles' frown deepened at the wrapped silencer cylinder that was also tossed on top of the pistols, and the knife, but he allowed Erik to kiss him again, grinding their trapped arousals together. It chafed and hurt, but Erik was beyond caring; he shrugged off his coat even as Charles' clever fingers dragged his belt off, then it was a struggle to get Charles' shoes and pants and boxers out of the way. He didn't bother with his own, shoving his pants and boxers down and wincing as Charles immediately wrapped his hands around him, the dry squeeze almost on the side of pain, Charles' red, red mouth curved in defiance.

He had worked two oiled fingers into Charles when Charles bit down hard over his neck and rasped, "All right, that's enough, you can fuck me now," in that goddamned prim and proper British accent, and his protests that Charles wasn't yet ready died unsaid. Charles tensed with a low hiss when he began to push into him, then he relaxed carefully, glaring at the ceiling as though personally offended by the cracks edged across its peeling surface. The oil had quite possibly ruined his pants and sweat had plastered Erik's shirt to his back, and as before, he had to sink his teeth into Charles' shoulder to keep from babbling.

It occurred to him briefly that what with Charles' ability, Charles had heard him anyway, always, all the soppy things he thought of whenever entwined with Charles, weaved in with lust and his fear of losing Charles and the green-eyed monster, and... fingers were curled in his hair, pulling him up for a kiss as Erik sheathed himself to the hilt. He couldn't keep this gentle if he tried, not with Charles' stuttered curses and the fingers clawing down his back, until he was shoving Charles up an inch whenever he thrust home, teeth bared as he dragged the slighter body up each time to meet him. Charles slipped his hand between their bodies to touch himself, his lovely face screwed in that distant look of concentration that he got whenever he was close, and Erik leaned in for a rough kiss, thrusting his tongue into Charles' mouth as he felt him shake and dig his fingers into his shoulders.

"Come on, then," Charles growled into his ear, and that did it for him as far as his libido was concerned, for fuck's sake. He was still trying to catch his breath, dazed and sated, when palms started pushing pointedly at his shoulders, and then Erik tried to kiss Charles and got bitten for his trouble, abusing his superior weight and strength to keep Charles pinned as he mouthed up his chin, and then the door opened and there was a shriek.

Erik instinctively reached for one of his guns just as Charles slapped his wrist down onto the ratty carpet, and rasped, "Oh, for God's sake, Raven, can't you knock?"

"I knocked!" Charles' adopted sister had clapped her hands over her eyes as she backpedaled against the door, which was thankfully now closed again. "Charles, what the hell, I thought you said that you'd shoot Max in the balls if you ever saw him again-"

"Yes, well," Charles pointedly extricated himself, grimacing and avoiding Erik's eyes, "I had a bit of a temporary relapse there. Raven, can you turn around, please? Thank you. Give us ten minutes."

"I'm going to have a cup of coffee in the nice cafe across the street. You can come and see me when you're decent," Raven crabbed over to the door, eyes still resolutely closed, and let herself out.

"She was _meant_ to be in San Francisco," Charles grumbled, not in the least embarrassed at being caught in a compromising position by his sister. An education in Oxford coupled by a law enforcement career in Scotland Yard, then in the NYPD, seemed to have excised every remaining inch of shame that Charles had once possessed, if any. Erik had once found it exhilarating. Now, he was feeling rather blindsided.

" _How_ many people have the keys to your apartment?"

"A few," Charles admitted, if vaguely, and tossed a box of tissues very accurately at Erik's head. "I'm using the shower. Get yourself cleaned up."

Erik rubbed at his temple. "We could share the shower."

"I know where that usually ends up," Charles picked up his strewn clothes, and then the Model 52. " _Temporary_ relapse, I said."

"Charles-"

"This never worked before, Erik," Charles interrupted, with a sigh. "And nothing's changed since then."

The door closed, and Erik deflated, depressed again, even as he wiped himself down and disposed of the tissues. Charles was right on the money again, as usual. The problem was indeed that nothing had changed. Especially not the way Erik tended to lose entire tiers of rational thought whenever Charles was remotely within the same room.

V.

Raven glowered at him over the rim of her cup of coffee when Erik sat down at the table beside Charles. "Seriously, Charles. How temporary is this relapse of yours?"

"Max is assisting me in an investigation," Charles assured her, even as he ordered a cup of tea for himself and a macchiato for Erik, without even thinking about it.

Erik was subjected to a suspicious once-over, then Raven drawled, "You mean he's the prime suspect?"

"Sadly, no," Charles shook his head, even as Erik smiled winningly at Raven just to annoy her. She had been very friendly at the beginning, when things were roses, but near the end, through the endless fights and arguments, the Xaviers had closed ranks. "I thought that you were doing a job in San Francisco, Raven."

"Sean's missing, Charles," Raven burst out, chewing on her lower lip. "Alex hasn't seen him for _weeks_. And it's not like him to just run off like that. Few days, a week, sure. But longer? No. Alex finally caved and told me yesterday. The fuckers should have gone to the police _ages_ ago!"

"Sean. Sean Cassidy?" When Raven nodded, Charles frowned for a moment. "You mean that vandal friend of yours."

"He's a graffiti _artist_ ," Raven corrected.

"I could check the records. He might be in processing," Charles looked doubtful even as he said this. "Look, Raven, I'll put out a missing persons notice, but there's nothing much else that I can do. Cassidy likes to go around the city at night to paint graffiti. Anything could have happened to him, and like you said, he could have been missing for weeks. He's been gone before. He usually turns up again, drunk or stoned off his arse in juvie. I'm sure that he's fine."

Raven looked so crestfallen that Erik was moved to ask, "What did Cassidy look like, and did he have any favorite hang outs at night?"

Charles glanced at him, eyebrows raised, and Raven's eyes darted between them both, then she grudgingly produced a photograph from her bag and handed it over, along with a piece of note paper with a list of addresses. The photograph was of a freckled, grinning boy, with a mop of sandy blonde hair. "Here. And I've got a list of the places that he liked to tag. To paint graffiti on," she elaborated, when Erik looked blank.

"I'll keep an eye out."

"Thanks, I guess," Raven decided, if reluctantly, "Though this is probably a transparent attempt on your part to get into my brother's pa... I mean good books again. Charles, I'll stay over at Angel's. In case you have any more relapses."

Charles closed his eyes for a moment, then he stared pointedly at Erik until Erik drank his coffee and got to his feet. "I have a meeting that I have to go to."

"Sure. Whatever." Raven shrugged, and Erik smiled again at her by way of a parting shot, toothily, this time, then wandered out to the pavement to flag down a cab to Glenacre.

During the cab ride, Erik busied himself by reading through the surprisingly long list of Cassidy's favorite spots to deface, committing the addresses to memory, until he reached the fourth address from the bottom.

Well, well. It was quite possible that Cassidy was indeed in real trouble, after all.

Instructing the cab to let him off half a block away from Glenacre, Erik paid up and strolled down the pavement, looking up at the blocks of stately flats that overlooked the sprawling, high-walled grounds of the Glenacre retirement home, until he found what he was looking for - the faint hint of a stylized 'SC' in bright green, partly obscured from the street view by a balcony, scrawled on the top corner of one of the blocks of flats.

Erik climbed the fire escape to the roof, as silently as he could, and crept over to the edge. From this view point, he had a good vantage point over the trimmed gardens of the tudor-styled mansion that made up the 'retirement home', and the sweeping willows in the gardens, as well as a back entrance that led out to an alleyway that could fit a getaway vehicle, if just.

Circling the roof, Erik found a painted row of letters and numbers on the ground, in the far corner, closest to the main street: '1V.3107 NY EMPIRE STATE 64', and on a second row, '28.08.62'.

Once he reached street level, Erik found a payphone, and dialed Charles' home number. Charles picked up on the fourth ring. "Xavier."

"Cassidy witnessed the first kidnapping," Erik started, and related what he had found on the roof.

"The murderer's vehicle license number, and a date." Charles swore. "I'm going to get down to the precinct. And I'll send someone to your location to photograph the site. I don't suppose that you're going to tell me why you picked it out of Raven's list. Or how you knew where the victim's retirement home was."

"Happy intuition?" Erik tried innocence.

"Fuck you, Lehnsherr, Cassidy's barely eighteen! If he was taken by the Joker killer-" Charles bit down another oath, then he added, in a calmer tone, "Did you cross check that list with the rest of the crime scene locations?"

"No matches."

"The first murder is always the important one, anyway," Charles muttered, "It's before the killer gets _practiced_. I'm going to have to talk to Raven and her friends again. Maybe Cassidy talked to someone about what he saw."

"Keep me updated. I'm going to investigate the retirement home. You won't be able to get a warrant for this place."

There was a pause, then Charles grudgingly confirmed, "All right," and then he added, after another longer pause, "Be careful."

Erik's heart showed how ~~pathetic~~ human he still was by skipping a beat, but before he could reply, Charles hung up.

For a place where the CIA apparently went to die of old age, the security was terrible. Erik made a mental note to make a complaint once he got the burn notice lifted. It was just a matter of scaling the walls, avoiding the line of sights of the security cameras hidden in the gardens, making it to the service entrance, finding the laundry room, putting on an orderly's coat, purloining a clipboard, and then keeping his head down and looking harassed.

To his considerable annoyance, he found Moira waiting for him in the records room, with reels already stacked up beside her, patiently playing back a reel on a projector set. "I tailed you," she told Erik, without looking up. "It's suspicious when a nursing home has closed circuit television security. That's not even in general public use yet."

"Do you have authority to come in here?" Moira was also dressed in an orderly's uniform. Also, Erik hadn't noticed that he had been tailed. Either Moira was very good, or he was getting careless. Blast.

"I could probably weasel something out. Not sure about you." Moira, however, skipped forward in the tape that she had. "Here. Look at this. I found it earlier. What were you doing up in that apartment block, anyway?"

"A friend of Charles' sister has disappeared. We think that he might have witnessed Ostler's kidnapping or murder. No blood in the alley, though. He was probably taken onto a getaway vehicle, and then murdered off site."

"A friend of Charles' sister?" Moira repeated, frowning.

"Raven knows a lot of... disreputable kids," Erik noted dryly. "Sometimes I think it's a way of spiting her brother."

The video quality was grainy. On the projector screen, a thin, grizzled old man wheeled into view, one hand raised as though in greeting. "That's Ostler," Moira confirmed. "Just out of the recreation rooms, where he was last seen by the staff."

"The CIA should have known about these tapes," Erik pointed out, accusingly. "And you say you weren't even aware of the name of the nursery home?" On the screen, Ostler was talking with someone off camera, looking relaxed and happy. He'd known the identity of his killer, then. He had _trusted_ him.

"I asked about it after I first received my briefing, all right?" Moira was visibly stressed. "I was told that it wasn't relevant, that I wasn't cleared for that grade of information. You know what that's like."

Reluctantly, Erik nodded. He _did_ know what the CIA could be like. "But you tailed me here anyway."

Moira's expression was the picture of innocence. "I followed a burned agent into the vicinity and lost him. I checked Glenacre for him and happened on him in the video records room."

That could work, if Moira had the balls to try it. On the screen, Ostler was nodding, and then the person he had been talking to padded out, taking hold of the handles on Ostler's wheelchair. Erik paused the tape instantly, feeling a chill settle down his spine. The slant of the man's shoulders, the furl of his hair... his face was hidden and unclear due to the positioning of the camera, but Erik would have recognised that loping gait anywhere.

"You know that man?" Moira guessed.

Erik had last seen the man on the screen in Langley. "That's Janos Quested. My handler, Riptide."

There was a long, stunned silence, then Moira swore fervently. "Jesus _Christ_."

VII.

Charles eyed them both with astonished suspicion when he came home to find Erik and Moira chatting amiably on the couch. Erik had felt much better about Moira after a few not-very-subtle queries had revealed that Moira hadn't actually been in a relationship with Charles; they'd dated briefly, but Moira stated that she wasn't the sort to get involved with a mark where it wasn't necessary, and besides, it seemed that Charles tended to spend a lot of time complaining about Erik.

Erik hadn't been entirely sure whether this was a good thing - either Charles wasn't over him yet, which was good, or he had really, really pissed Charles off the last time, which was also entirely possible.

In any regard, Erik rather missed Langley, now that he had been cut off from it, even the horrible coffee in the canteen, and Moira had been trained by almost the same set of instructors, and besides, she was possibly a much cheaper route to Riptide.

"What did you find in the nursing home?" Charles asked immediately, settling into the armchair.

"Moira, actually," Erik admitted wryly, and gave Charles a brief run down on the situation.

Charles looked gloomy when he had finished. "Well, that's torn it, then. I'm going to have to tell the Inspector about it, somehow, and it'll be taken off my hands. We still don't have any leads on Cassidy, either. His roommates don't know anything. The number plate belongs to a van, which was stolen months ago - we matched it to a police report. Belongs to a small time furniture delivery company. The owners checked clean."

Erik glanced over at Moira, whose shoulders slumped. "Same deal, Erik. I'm going to have to tell my handler. I can't keep you out of it either. You understand why, don't you?"

"Yes. And it might be for the best."

"I don't know if it'll be of any help, but I'll strongly recommend that they look into your burn notice again." Moira nodded slowly. "I mean, if your handler's mixed up in this, God knows what else he might have done."

"That's it, then?" Charles was beginning to look annoyed. "What about the Joker cards?"

"They're still being decrypted." Moira shrugged. "But I suspect that it won't be our problem for much longer."

"Give me a copy of the data. I'll see what I can find out." Erik offered. "This is personal, now. And I somehow doubt that the data will be some form of crazy talk."

"I'll see what I can do," Moira promised, as she got up from her seat. "But I'll probably be reassigned immediately. Charles, if I don't see you again... I think that you're a good man. The NYPD needs more people like you. If I can, I won't confirm the CIA's suspicions about you. But try to be more careful in the future."

"I will." Charles also got up to his feet, as did Erik, and Moira shook Charles by the hand, then Erik. "Thank you, Moira. I'm sorry about my earlier outbursts."

"Don't worry about it, Charles. As to you, Erik, I'll wish you luck," Moira smiled faintly, tilting her head a tiny fraction in Charles' direction. "I think you'll need it."

Charles flushed a little as Moira swept past and out of the flat, then he slouched back into the armchair. "What a day. And I'm going to have to go right back to the precinct, I think, once I call the Inspector."

"Lucky you," Erik sat back down at the couch. "How's Raven?"

"Being annoying. I tasked my sergeant with fielding her when she showed up at the precinct. Cassidy's probably dead," Charles added, with a deep sigh. "I'm going to have to break that to her. Poor kid was just in the wrong place at the worst possible time."

"But he's been missing for 'weeks', hasn't he? That's earlier than the 'martian manhunter' body. Earlier than many of the others."

"Kill a few old homeless people, that's one thing," Charles shook his head. "Murder a kid and dump his body in public, that's a whole new level of heat. They probably stashed his body somewhere. He isn't in the system right now."

"Or he might still be alive," Erik argued. "If you want to stay on the case, you could tell the Inspector that."

"We already know who the murderer - or one of his accomplices - is," Charles pointed out, grimly. "As much as I don't like it, Cassidy's life is in the hands of Moira and the rest of you spooks now. And if you'll excuse me, I need to make that phone call."

"Charles," Erik tried, on impulse, because it was possible that once the burn notice was lifted he would be recalled, and because he was always stubborn in the face of the inevitable, "After all this is sorted out, could we-"

"No."

"I haven't even told you what I wanted," Erik pointed out, as reasonably as he could.

"Because I know what you want, Erik. And I didn't even have to listen in," Charles told him wearily. "As long as you keep operating above the law, it will never work out."

"I don't operate above the law. The CIA has a few legal exceptions."

"Those men you killed to 'protect me' wouldn't have been in the scope of your duties, I'm sure," Charles retorted. "I don't want to argue with you again, Erik."

Damn. "And the last time worked out so well, too."

Charles scowled. "That was a lapse in my sanity, I think. A temporary one."

"I could retire," Erik blurted out, evidently because a prolonged exposure to Charles' British accent melted his brain cells, "Once they unfreeze my assets, I'll have enough. I could set up a business."

"Really?" Charles asked, with open skepticism. "You enjoy being in the CIA, Erik. You like the danger. The thrill."

"I get quite a lot of that in a domestic relationship with you. I haven't had a boyfriend or a girlfriend before who would accompany wake-up calls with threats of serious bodily harm to be committed with small arms," Erik noted dryly, if with painful honesty, and Charles snorted, though his lips twitched promisingly at the corners with amusement.

"I very much doubt that you'll be able to retire, Mister Lehnsherr. But all right. After this case is 'sorted', we can talk. But no promises."

VIII.

"We're already even, Lehnsherr," Logan told him the moment the retired operative got out of his car. "What do you want now?"

Erik, in actual fact, wasn't entirely sure what sort of link Logan had with Stark Industries. Logan had been a known friend of Howard Stark, during the second World War, but had otherwise dropped out of the picture. All that he was relying on were the sparse footnotes to Logan's CIA file, which had included a series of speculations on the unbelievable run of luck that Logan had when he had still been active. Erik had privately thought that tech was involved. Tech that wasn't available to anyone else.

Besides, he very much doubted that there were many ways in which Tony Stark would 'overlook' prototypes going 'missing' in his private lab. By all reports, the young billionaire was fairly uncomplicated where his interests were involved. And he was very good at cracking codes, according to his CIA file.

"I need some cryptograms looked at. Confidentially."

"And you think that I've got a good head for puzzles?" Logan drawled, raising his eyebrows. "If it don't bleed, I ain't got the means to solve it, bub."

"But you know someone who does," Erik stated, and braced himself.

Logan, however, eyed him for a long, careful moment. "You're on shaky ground there, son. This is the Ostler matter, ain't it."

"I know. I'm sorry. A kid's dead now, Logan. All because he was in the wrong place, and became a witness. It's becoming personal." Raven had been very upset when the body had been found in a dumpster by some scavenging homeless persons, and when Raven was upset, Charles became very highly strung. Erik would rather chance Logan's broad reputation for violence, at this point. "Something's rotten. And it might be the CIA."

"Fuck, Lehnsherr, when you look for trouble, you ain't half bad at falling neck deep into the shit," Logan observed, with a grunt. "All right. Give me the puzzles. I'll see what I can do. But you'll owe me one, son."

"Gladly." Erik handed over the transcribed algorithms with relief.

"I'll call you when I've got an answer for you," Logan told him curtly, and left, leaving Erik over two hours early for his next appointment.

At Washington Square park, Erik had played a couple of blitz games by the time Charles showed up and sat down at his table, looking out of breath and stormy. "I got taken off the case. Including Cassidy's."

"Moira, too." Moira had told him as much, when she had slipped him the transcripts.

" _And_ I've been told to take a few weeks off." Charles muttered.

"Good. You look like you need the rest."

"Don't patronize me, Erik. I intend to use my 'time off' to keep an eye on you. You've been having far better luck with the entire endeavor than I have, anyway."

Erik stared at him, somewhat surprised. "I didn't think that you would keep on the matter after it was taken off your hands."

"I had to break the news to Cassidy's parents this morning, Erik," Charles murmured wearily, resting his head in his hands. "God _damn_ it. I want to catch this bastard. Whoever it was broke most of the bones in Cassidy's body, did you know that?Especially the little ones. And he's definitely been dead for a while. No one in the team's happy about being kicked off the case at all."

The murder of children held a particular horror for the police, it seemed. "You'll get into trouble."

"Sometimes it's worth it," Charles shot back, as the Xavier Iron Curtain came up, and Erik had to hide a smile. Charles looked like he was in a shooting mood. "What have you got?"

"My contact's looking at the transcripts. I'll have to wait."

Charles exhaled, staring at the chess board in silence. The day was late enough that the park was turning empty, and Erik watched a small family pack up their picnic in the distance, brats tumbling over the grass, waiting patiently for Charles to come to his conclusions. Maybe Erik might even be threaded in, somewhere, with a minimum of violence. One could only hope.

Eventually, Charles decided, "Let's go and have a drink. A long drink. And a bite to eat. Then we'll go through all the notes again. We might have missed something."

"All right." Erik agreed, and he wasn't able to hide his smile this time. Thankfully, Charles didn't seem to notice, hauling himself up from his chair.

IX.

There was no word from Moira, much to Erik's frustration, nor did checking the other crime scenes turn up any clues. Whoever the killer had been, he had been good; no DNA left at the scene of the crimes, no fingerprints, no further witnesses. Erik managed to sneak into the morgue to take a look at the bodies, but they yielded no clues; all the victims were middle aged or older, and all of them had died to a precise knife thrust up through the ribs. The other stab wounds seemed cosmetic, save on Ostler, who had defensive wounds on his arms. Ostler had tried to fight back.

He'd have to get Ostler's file, somehow. Find out what Ostler might have known, that would have caused his death. Charles was off trying to wheedle details of the Cassidy murder off the new team that had been assigned to it; somehow, Erik rather doubted that he would get anything of import.

Unless Erik wanted to do something insane, like break into Langley to steal Ostler's file, it looked as though he had no choice but to wait on Moira. Logan, at least, had dropped him a call, and Erik took particular care to lose his FBI tail this time, before sidling into yet another of Logan's favorite alleys.

This time, Logan wasn't alone; leaning on the back of Logan's car was an African American with a single steely eye, the left eye covered by a black eye patch, giving him a vaguely piratical appearance. He was dressed in black; a black shirt, dress pants, and a long coat, which added dramatically to the villain chic effect of it all.

Erik shot Logan a questioning glance, and Logan snorted, breathing out a puff of smoke. "Lehnsherr, this is... what are you calling yourself nowadays, son?"

"Nick Fury," Fury strode over, enveloping Erik's hand in a crushing grip. "You seem to have come into possession of a most curious set of cryptograms, Mister Lehnsherr."

Erik arched an eyebrow at Logan, who shrugged. "You said you wanted help with them. You didn't say from whom. Fury here's far better suited to fucked up spy game shit. Now you boys gonna play nice? I'm leaving."

"Yes, indeed," Fury remained impassive, and after a moment's pause, Erik nodded slowly. He could feel the vague outline of at least three concealed weapons on Fury's person, two of which were projectile based, but setting up assassinations like this wasn't Logan's way. If Logan wanted a person dead, he would do it himself.

When Logan had driven off, Erik ventured, "You've decoded the cryptograms?"

"They're lists, Mister Lehnsherr. Names. The names of every active CIA operative above a certain clearance grade working undercover, and their approximate locations in latitudes and longitudes. The mother of all burn notices, should we say."

Erik's fingertips started to itch as his blood ran cold, even as he fought for calm. "Who are you, Mister Fury?"

"We're on the same side, Lehnsherr. Or at least we were, until you got burned." Fury tossed him a storm gray card, with his name printed upon it, and a symbol of an eagle, wings outspread.

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division?" Erik frowned. "I haven't heard of you."

"Strictly speaking, we're under UN control," Fury admitted. "All of you in the CIA, MI6 and so on, you look at the smaller picture. We're on a scale higher than that."

"So you're like a spy agency, except that you try to encourage your marks to, what, voluntarily offer information? Undergo sanctions? Slap themselves on the wrist?"

"Very funny, sir," Fury didn't crack a smile. "The scope of our duties isn't important right now, but we do try to keep a balance between the world powers. I'm curious to know how you came across these transcripts, Mister Lehnsherr. I do know that they're worth a lot of money to the interested collector. You were burned in Mexico, weren't you? Decided to change sides, did we? Stand still, sir, and no quick movements. We've got eyes on high."

Erik grit his teeth, and fought to keep his hands at his sides. "I didn't know what were in the transcripts. They were copied from the Joker cards left on the bodies of the 'caped crusader' murders."

"And where are these Joker cards now?"

"With the CIA." If he dived backwards and ran for cover... but that could still be dangerous, unless he figured out where the sniper(s) were sighting from. "They weren't able to crack them. A friend allowed me to help."

"These are based on a rather simple variation of one of the CIA's ciphers, Lehnsherr. I very much doubt that even the most junior member of their specialist cipher team would have difficulty cracking them. And if they had found out what were on these cards, I would certainly have heard about it. Try again."

"How should I have known that?" Erik grit out, "And maybe your 'links' to the CIA are faulty, Mister Fury. Try the CIA agent who was assigned to this case, undercover. She'll tell you what she told me." Or would she? He should have investigated Moira-

"If you mean the CIA Paranormal Forces agent tasked with investigating the potential 'psychic' in the NYPD, I hear that she's gone MIA. She was due to report back to her handler two days ago and hasn't done so. Curious, isn't it. Especially since it seems that you're currently residing with the mark that she was keeping an eye on."

"If you've been following the murders," Erik growled, "Then you'd no doubt know who the first victim was." So Moira had also been taken. Somehow, Erik doubted that she was still alive. It was possibly pure luck that she had even managed to get him copies of the cryptograms before she had 'disappeared'.

"Patrick Ostler. Ex-CIA. What about him?"

"The murderer, or an accomplice, was my handler. Riptide. There's video footage, from closed circuit television."

Fury tilted his head. "And where is this footage that you are referring to?"

"With... the Paranormal Forces agent," Erik conceded, reluctantly. Damn. He really _had_ been off his game.

"Convenient." Fury sighed. "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to bring you in for further questioning, Mister Lehnsherr. Do you want to come nicely, or are we going to have to be uncivilised?"

Erik smiled thinly, even as he concentrated. "How about we walk away, and nobody gets hurt?"

"'Fraid we can't do that, sir."

"Pity." Erik drew and fired the tranquilizer gun, even as Fury dived for cover. Erik could feel a blip of metal abruptly jump into his range, as though travelling at high speeds, and it was all he could do to turn it aside. Brick chipped off the ground next to his foot, and sweating from the effort of concentration, Erik turned to run.

He managed to turn another bullet, if barely, as he made it out of the alley, and was running for his rental car when he felt a heavy impact crack against his skull. Dazed, he stumbled, only for someone to shove him down on the pavement. At the second impact, Erik struggled as he felt himself swim into unconsciousness, but it was going to be futile, based on experience. Dimly, he could hear Fury's drawl of, "A thrown rock at twenty paces doesn't speak of finesse, Miss Romanov."

"Man can turn bullets. A rock seemed appropriate." This was spoken from the pressure above his back. "Don't worry, Director. No permanent damage done."

"Signal Barton. I'll call for evac."

X.

Erik woke up in a cell nursing a dull headache, utterly disoriented. As a whole, this wasn't unusual.

The cell was a clean, small, four metres by four metres square, and had a cot, a sink and a toilet. Someone had also taken the trouble of bandaging his head, and it felt as though he had possibly been injected with painkillers. All in all, not bad, for hostile hospitality. They'd even left him with his clothes, though not his weapons.

The only odd thing about the place was the constant, background hum, as though he was in the bowels of a giant machine, but Erik decided not to dwell on the curious fact for now. Breaking out of the cell wasn't going to be difficult - he could see that the door was made out of some sort of steel alloy, as was the locking mechanism. Getting out of wherever he was, on the other hand, might be trickier.

Much of what Kipling had called the Great Game was constructed of patience. Erik lay back down on the cot, folded his hands over his chest, and stared at the ceiling. The moment he got out of here, he was going to have to ask Azazel about 'SHIELD'. Erik had enjoyed a very high clearance level, when he hadn't yet been burned, and he certainly hadn't heard of any UN-based espionage division. Besides, Fury was African-American, and the world thought little of his race, still, where high command was concerned.

Worse, whatever Fury was, he and his organisation now had access to the list of names.

If Fury had been telling him the truth about Moira, then it seemed that the rot went deeper in the CIA than Erik had even imagined. But why go to all the trouble of the Joker cards? Why kill the homeless persons?

The video record, the cards and the way the victims had been killed certainly suggested a trained professional. If the CIA had obscured the first victim's investigation, that either meant that the conspiracy was greater than Erik suspected, or more likely, that the first card had been decoded and there had been a very quiet and secret panic on the top levels. That was more likely. So a junior, female agent from one of the kook divisions was dispatched undercover. An agent who was smart, but who was afraid enough of losing her hard-earned position in the old boys' club of the CIA not to ask too many questions, while the rest of the CIA moved into damage control. And then she had gone to all the wrong places, and had asked all the wrong questions, anyway...

There was a knock on the cell door, then the panel at face level slid open. "The Director wants to see you. Approach the cell door with your hands behind your back, and put your wrists through the slot."

A second slot, at waist level, large enough to fit his hands, slid open. Erik hesitated for a moment, then he obeyed. It wasn't as though handcuffs were very much of an issue to him, anyway. Helmeted guards in dark blue uniforms, toting what looked like StarkTech's version of the AK-47, marched him down the narrow, windowless corridors, until he came to a large office. The curved wall facing him was all large panes of glass, looking down over the _clouds_.

Blinking, Erik glanced back as the guards filed out of the room, then over to the sole pieces of furniture in the room - a large, curved mahogany desk, empty save for a white mug balanced on a corner, a large chair behind it, filled by Fury, and two steel chairs before it. Charles started up from the chair, looking him over, then glaring at Fury.

"Director-"

"Charles, what are you doing here?" Erik demanded, incredulous.

"Sit down, Xavier. Welcome to the Helicarrier, Lehnsherr. You can get yourself out of your cuffs, can't you?"

Grudgingly, Erik clicked the cuffs open, and tossed them onto the desk, then he stalked over to seat himself in the chair. The steel hummed reassuringly under his palms, but Erik always felt underdressed without a weapon. Fury smirked, as he pocketed the cuffs. "Interesting ability, that one. Sorry about the pantomime, it's procedure. Xavier, why don't you fill in your friend?"

"A few hours ago the Inspector called me up and told me that there was a gentleman looking for me in the precinct," Charles had assumed a flat tone, which showed that he was beginning to lose his considerable patience. "That's when I met the Director. He said that he had you in custody, and he wanted to know about Moira, and about the case."

"I could have told you everything that Charles could, Director. There's no need for him to be here," Erik clenched his hands over the arms of his chair.

"Maybe you could've, but you didn't have, say, the copies of the video tapes that you mentioned earlier. Or a copy of Ostler's file, the original of which seems to have gone missing from the CIA's records."

Erik blinked at Charles, who flushed a little. "Moira somehow got into my office when I was on enforced leave and taped them under my table. I found them only after she'd gotten reassigned, and I had gone into the office to do a bit of administrative housekeeping. Since she went to all that trouble I thought that I should just keep them hidden until I could sort out all the threads. I meant to tell you. Sorry."

So Moira had her suspicions, then. "Can we trust Fury?"

Charles glanced at Fury, who was smirking, then at Erik, then he sighed. "I think so. He seems legitimate, or at least he thinks that he is. We're in some SHIELD flying carrier headquarters, right out of science fiction. Is your 'business' always like this?"

"Not usually, no." Erik glowered at Fury. "So do you believe me now?"

"Let's say that I'm reassessing my original conclusions, Lehnsherr." Fury pulled out a folder, placing it on the table. "This is Ostler's file. He was never a field agent, but he was perhaps one of the best... analysts that the CIA had to offer. He could pick patterns out of seemingly random data, he was perceptive, and more importantly, he never forgot anything. He was recently, about six months ago, pulled temporarily out of retirement to analyze a set of data patterns. Transactions. Missions that had gone awry due to bad luck at a bad time. Information that had gone missing."

"He thought that there was a mole of the highest order?" Charles asked, thoughtfully.

"More than that, Xavier. He thought that he had discovered an agency within the agencies, with its own agenda, made up of spies working in existing organisations. And it called itself the Hellfire Club. You're sitting up, Lehnsherr. Got something to add?"

"I was in Mexico because the drug barons were getting organised. It was suspected that they were all reporting to a single leader organisation," Erik recalled grimly. "It was unprecedented. With combined resources, they were buying up local law enforcement, politicians, whole towns. There was a suspicion that it was going to quietly take over the government itself. I managed to get into one of the drug baron's forts, to look through his documents. The organization they were reporting to was called the Hellfire Club. The next day, I was heading to the CIA mail drop when I got jumped. Gave them a fight, but I got unlucky."

"So you got too close and got burned," Fury summarized. "But instead of getting killed like everyone else who got in their way, you turned up back in New York, instead. Strange."

"Maybe they had second thoughts," Erik suggested, as insolently as he could. It was definitely another glaring question that needed answers to.

"People in the drug trade don't usually have second thoughts, Lehnsherr," Fury stated wearily. "Nor do they tend to go for flashy displays. This was on the front page of today's Times."

Fury tossed a newspaper on the table. On the front page, printed in large font, was a familiar cryptogram. At Erik's expression, Fury added, "It's a fresh one. Short. It reads: The new world order has come. You have had your head start. Best regards, the Hellfire Club."

"Why publish this one, but not the others? And why did the Times publish it?" Charles asked, pulling the paper towards him.

"Seems the daughter of the chief editor of the Times went missing and this was part of the ransom deal," Fury noted evenly. "No police report will probably be made. I've got people looking for her. As to the other question, Xavier, I'm trying to find out. In the meantime, seeing as the last time anyone got close to this Hellfire Club was in whatever you were doing in Mexico, maybe you want to head back south of the border, Lehnsherr."

"Unless you can lift my burn notice, it's going to be a problem." Erik pointed out mildly. "Or if you're willing to give me a loan of say, five hundred thousand American dollars, I might be able to get in touch with my handler." When Fury arched an eyebrow, Erik reluctantly added, "That was the price that the Broker named."

"Ah yes. Azazel." Fury steepled his fingers. "Hmm. Perhaps a loan can be arranged. On my terms, of course."

"You could have gotten in touch with the murder suspect all along?" Charles demanded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't have five hundred thousand dollars, Charles. Neither did you, I should think."

Charles' lips thinned, promising another argument, once they were in private, but he turned his eyes back to the newspaper. "I'm going with you to this meeting."

"That might not be possible-"

"Make it happen, then," Charles cut in, folding his arms, and Erik swallowed a sigh.

"I'll wire the money once you give me an account," Fury added, with a glance between the both of them. "I do hope that it won't be wasted."

XI.

Azazel seemed unsurprised when Erik told him that he had the money. "Ah, you are very resourceful after all, friend Lehnsherr."

"Of course." Erik was making the call from a public payphone, this time, with Charles sitting on the bench outside the booth, staying watchful. Fury had returned their weapons to them, albeit with snide remarks about the legality of Erik's, and the money had arrived from an unmarked bank transfer shortly after.

"There is a yacht docked at the North River Pier 88, on the Hudson River," Azazel noted thoughtfully. "Called Lady Luck, I believe. Go there tomorrow night at around seven."

"That was fast," Erik observed, surprised. He had thought that Azazel would have needed to make a few calls, at the last.

"Ah, I believe in service," Azazel declared, expansively. "After all, I had no doubt that you would find the money, eventually. Anything else?"

Erik hesitated, then he asked, "Have you heard about 'SHIELD', Azazel? UN organization, apparently."

"Friend Lehnsherr, you know that I do not run a charity," Azazel replied, if with playful reproach. "How much do you want to know? I will give you a quote."

That was answer enough, in fact, if Azazel was going to go into price list mode. "Maybe next time, Azazel. Thank you."

" _Spasiba_ , friend Lehnsherr. It is always a pleasure doing business with you."

Charles got up from the bench when Erik let himself out of the booth. "The meeting's tomorrow," Erik told him.

"Quick."

"Azazel's been known to make miracles happen." Erik conceded.

"What about Fury?"

"What about him?"

"It's his money," Charles pointed out, though his lips curved into a faint smile.

"He didn't use it to buy me," Erik shrugged. As far as he was concerned, he still didn't trust Fury. "Are you going to insist on coming with me?"

"It's just a meeting, isn't it?"

"Might be an ambush. Might be worse. Azazel promised a meeting. Whether I get out of it alive or not isn't in the deal." Azazel enjoyed the nickname of 'the Red Devil' for a reason, after all. The Broker would deliver to the letter, but no more, and if possible, sometimes he took pay from both sides.

"It's a strange world that you live in, Erik," Charles shook his head, and they walked companionably back to the apartment.

Erik glanced at Charles, but Charles was watching the cars pass by on the street. "I know. That's why I'm trying to keep you out of it."

"Very sweet of you," Charles snorted, his hands jammed into his jeans pockets, but he was neutral during lunch and marginally friendly during dinner, and afterwards, when Erik decided to test his luck in the apartment by pushing Charles up against the door for a kiss, he didn't get shot.

"Having another relapse?" Erik asked, when they broke for air and Charles was working his teeth into Erik's skin, just above his collarbone.

"Oh, shut up," Charles muttered, "Try and make it to the bedroom. Some stains can't be washed out of that carpet."

They made it as far as the bedroom door before Charles shoved him against the wall with a low snarl and yanked his pants down to his knees, pushing the first slicked finger into him, his free hand clawed into the straps of his gun holsters over his spine like a harness, and later, if the awful yellow wallpaper had one extra stain on it, that wasn't Erik's fault, in his opinion.

XII.

Erik had tried to shake Charles over the next day, but Charles could be as stubborn as a mule, and in the end they were both watching Pier 88 from a safe distance. There was indeed a sleek, white yacht named 'Lady Luck', lighting up as the sun was setting, but there seemed to be no crew activity. Erik checked his watch. They were still ten minutes early.

"Looks like a trap." Charles observed.

"You don't need to sound so happy about it." Erik glanced around them. "All right. We could sneak on board by diving into the water and climbing up the anchor... _Charles_!"

Charles was already trotting towards the ship. Erik caught up with him when a security guard stopped him from walking onto the pier itself.

"NYPD," Charles flashed his badge. "I'm afraid that I'll have to board that ship, sir."

"Don't you need a search warrant?" the guard asked, suspiciously.

"Technically, yes," Charles admitted cheerfully, "But... Mister Price, was it, I see from your badge... Mister Price, I could go away and get that search warrant, but then I might come back and find all the smuggled illegal weapons missing, and then I'll be remembering your face, won't I? Could be a lot of trouble that you weren't paid for, were you? Or you could let me and my associate on board the ship, and if we find nothing, well, that's that, but if we did, could be a feather in your cap, wouldn't it? 'Harbor officials assist the NYPD in impounding illegal arms shipment'. Won't that be something to talk to your grandchildren about, Mister Price?"

Price assumed the slightly glazed look that people got whenever faced with Charles' deductions. "I don't know about that, sir."

"We'll only be fifteen minutes, I assure you."

"Oh, well then, if you were just going to nip on board and then off, maybe I didn't see nothing," the guard was beginning to sweat.

"Good man," Charles clapped him on the shoulder, and continued walking briskly towards the yacht. Price glanced at Erik helplessly, who shrugged. He knew what being blindsided by Charles felt like.

The luxurious yacht was seemingly empty, even five minutes past seven, and that wasn't like Azazel at all, not to deliver. Cursing under his breath, Erik followed Charles as they checked every deck of the small yacht, until they reached the engine deck. There was a videophone propped on a small crate in the very center, and as Charles gripped Erik's wrist tightly, Erik noticed the explosives taped to the large silver propulsion engines.

Charles tugged them back up towards the steps, but metal shutters abruptly slithered past, cutting them off from the deck above. A faint echo across them indicated that the other exit was cut off, and then the video screen flickered, an image forming.

On the screen, Janos Quested smiled thinly. "Lehnsherr."

"If I survive this, I'm going to find Azazel and kill him," Erik muttered.

"He'll return half the money, Lehnsherr. Azazel's... conscientious, that way." Quested's smile widened faintly. "Or you might even get what you asked him for eventually, depending."

"Depending on what?" Charles growled, frowning.

"We've had our eye on you for a while, Lehnsherr," Quested continued. "You're one of the CIA's best young agents. You've proven yourself to be resourceful and intelligent. It's the reason why the Black King decided not to have you killed in Mexico, but to give you a second chance. And you've been impressive. Determined. Ambitious. There's always an opening in the Hellfire Club for people like you."

"And if I refuse?"

"Well then, I'm sure you've seen all the explosives," Quested continued, in his carefully neutral tone. "I'll drink to your memory. I believe you had always been rather partial to port."

Erik scowled at the videophone set. "You're not leaving me much choice then, are you?"

"No. That is not our way."

"What do you want? What does the Hellfire Club want? Why did you kill all those people?" Charles cut in, angrily.

"Perhaps you saw our message in the papers," Quested, however, was looking at Erik. "A new world order. First by destabilizing the so-called Great Game."

"It's all a blind," Erik predicted, with narrowing eyes. "In sleight of hand, you distract the audience with something flashy while you switch the balls in the cups. Is that it? It had to do with Mexico, didn't it?"

"Very good, Lehnsherr. Unfortunately, while the CIA was scrambling to deduce the meaning of the little puzzle in murder that we set for them, they didn't think to look too closely at our hand of cards south of the border. Or the irregularity of your burn notice. Thanks to that, we've consolidated our hold in Mexico."

Charles sucked in a tight breath, but Erik interrupted, "So... if I accept your 'job offer'? What next? Do I get to meet the Club in person?"

Quested nodded at Charles. "If you accept, put a bullet through the detective's head. He's a brilliant young man as well, it'll be quite a waste. But rather... inflexible, shall we say. So very principled. The Club has no use for him, and you'll need to sever all your usual ties. Take your time."

"If you _think_ that I'm going to-" Erik snarled.

"Erik, can you raise these?" Charles knocked his knuckles against the shutters.

Erik glanced at the shutters. He could feel them in his mind, but only vaguely. "No. They're some sort of alloy. And even if they were steel, they'd be too heavy."

"What about disarming the explosives? Spies can do that, can't they? Don't you just cut the correct wires?"

"I'm not that kind of spy." Someday when he had time, Erik was going to hunt down Ian Fleming. On the screen, Quested's smile turned mocking.

"Oh, well then." Charles drew out his Model 52 from under his jacket, and offered it to Erik, stock first. "Make it quick."

"You don't _seriously_ think that I'll shoot you," Erik said, incredulous.

"I don't want you to die, Erik. And if it's a choice between both of us getting blown up, or you making it out of here, it's clear, isn't it?"

"How can you be so _reasonable_?" Erik snapped.

"It's a fine detective trait, so I've heard." Charles smiled lightly, and pressed the gun into Erik's hands. "Come on."

"You're the most infuriating person I have ever met," Erik growled, his throat clenching, as he dragged Charles close and kissed him hard, pouring all his longing, his anger, all his stupid lust into it, and then he fired.

The screen of the videophone shattered.

"What..." Charles blinked, astonished, as Erik darted over to the stairs, wedged the tranquilizer gun between the shutter and a step, and dragged Charles back, activating a switch on the other gun. There was a beep, then a small localized explosion, and as Erik hoped, a hole in the shutters and the steps that was small enough to squeeze through, albeit with molten edges. Thank God for Tony Stark and his love of explosives.

"Go!" They had managed to get up onto the top deck and jump off the side, into the water, when the shockwave from the explosion rippled the water above them. Burning debris began to rain down into the water even as they swam away from the ship to the next pier and pulled themselves up onto it, gasping.

"Why didn't you tell me that you could do that?" Charles demanded, once he got his breath back.

"Can't you read minds?"

"You were thinking about other things! And you dropped my gun, didn't you? Do you know how much paperwork that is going to cause me?"

"Jesus Christ, I just saved our lives! Don't I get a break?" Erik snapped, and was about to drag Charles over anyway to kiss him again when someone cleared his throat pointedly behind them.

"I suggest," Fury noted urbanely, as another black sedan screeched to a halt to their right, "That we quit the scene for now and let my men handle the containment. Xavier's colleagues should arrive at any time. Oh, and when you're feeling better, Mister Lehnsherr, I have a job offer for you."

"Another one?" Erik frowned, suspicious.

"Well now," Fury glanced at the burning ship, "I'm rather more civilised about disappointment, I should think. And I get the feeling that I'm going to need all the good men I can get to bring down the Hellfire Club."

"Then maybe we can talk terms, Director Fury." Erik acknowledged, pulling himself shakily to his feet. "But when we find them, Quested is mine."

.epilogue

Sean came from a big Irish family, and the funeral after the post-mortem was complete was a grim, crowded affair. Afterwards, Charles crossed the cemetery, leaving his sister with his friends, and slipped into the black sedan that pulled up beside the sidewalk.

Erik was dressed simply, in a black turtleneck and dark jeans, but Charles knew wryly that this never meant that he was unarmed. The sharp, focused look of purpose had returned, at least. Charles relaxed a fraction, and tried not to look too closely at the thick hum of thoughts that always filled Erik's mind.

"You missed the funeral."

"I'm not one for them." Erik watched the traffic, as he pulled back into it. "How's work?"

"The same as always. Insane. You?"

"SHIELD's run differently, but it has its benefits. I might stay on, after we find _them_."

Charles nodded, slowly, and didn't say anything as they turned a corner, behind a large yellow truck. Erik lived in a world of shadows, outside of the law, and once, Charles was certain that he could never accept it, the same way Erik always seemed to have problems with Charles' own vocation. They had fought, more or less constantly, over the thorny two years of their relationship. After the _Lady Luck_ , however, it all seemed so inconsequential. He had been willing to die if that had been what it took for Erik to survive.

It looked like he wasn't the only one that the knowledge of how easily Charles had made that decision had changed. But Erik was often away, again, and even when he was in New York, Charles wasn't quite ready to think of what they had as more than a set of... friendly arrangements. He knew that Erik thought differently. But Erik had broken his heart before, if with a lot of help from Charles himself, not by shattering it cleanly but by a steady unrelenting pressure, with all their disagreements and differences and flaming rows, until something had given, and that wound had never healed well. It could happen again. It probably would.

Erik reached over absently to rub his palm over Charles' thigh, when there were no cars close to them, and after a heartbeat, Charles pressed his hand over the long fingers.

"I have a few days until Fury triangulates something for me," Erik noted, with a lopsided grin. "I thought perhaps that we could have a nice dinner, catch a show, and enjoy the weekend with a minimum of strife."

"Don't push your luck, Erik," Charles warned, though he squeezed Erik's hand with something that could be affection, and stroked his thumb over the ridges of callused knuckles.

**Author's Note:**

> fin: Notes: In Marvel'verse, surveillance cameras existed since the 1940s (lol Captain America). Also, yes, I do seem to use Fury a lot. :/ But he had to appear in a spy story. Sorry I didn't go into more detail; the pinch-hit wasn't meant to run this long as it is, and I'm out of time. :3 I don't think the story needed it, anyway. Maybe some other day.
> 
> For everyone who managed to guess... congrats! Hugs.


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